


The Brutality of Horses.

by his tongue and liver (doubleinfinity)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - High School, Arguing, Bullying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Denial of Feelings, Denial of Homosexuality, English class, Falling In Love, Fighting, First Kiss, Forbidden Love, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up, Heavy Angst, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Late Night Conversations, Lost Love, M/M, Making Up, Mild Sexual Content, New Year's Eve, North Carolina, Pining, Poetry, Queer Youth, Reunion Sex, Rule Breaking, Separations, Slow Burn, Smoking, Sneaking Out, Truth or Dare, children to adults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 10:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16680016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubleinfinity/pseuds/his%20tongue%20and%20liver
Summary: North Carolina1982In the brutality of their youth, they gallop terribly against each other.Hmmm well I know in my heart I know it's likely nobody is going to read this lmao (even considered changing the names to something with popularity and a decent following) but I needed one good, long, all-encompassing Chris/Eddie high school story so fuck it.  I'm here and this is where my soul has stayed over the years.  c:





	The Brutality of Horses.

chapter 01/01. hallways, night swings, football fields, wild horses.

Eddie slouched against his chair, its wooden rungs creaking against his back.

If he did a studious job of it, he could fold at least one leg beneath the desk and make himself too small to see. This teacher didn’t bother him too badly, anyhow. She kept her eyes in a constant sweep over the classroom, never boring too deep of a hole into his forehead. He did what he needed to. He didn’t have to drag his essays verbally across the floor and lay them in a slog of ill-formed sentences for her to know that he did his part.

He scraped the edge of his nail against the trade paperback, flicking off another layer of cover art.

People were talking around him in unstructured groups, making noise. He sank lower into his chair, going for the bulky Walkman in his jacket pocket, but before he’d even hooked his headphones around his ears, Ms. Wagner was shaking her blonde head at him.

Glowering, he ran the tip of his nail along the edge of the book, tattering the first few pages.

It had been a long morning.

His counselor made him go up to her office again, wanting him to pull his shirt down to his collars (like that wasn’t fucking creepy) because she’d started worrying, due to his behavior and a glimpse of bruising, that it was happening again.

She was fucking stupid. Like the rest of them. It was always happening, and not just when his shirt happened to slip below the neckline.

“Okay, okay, back to me,” Ms. Wagner announced with an elevated voice, cutting through the scattered conversations. She circled to stand in front of the class and reached back, palming her desk copy of the book into her hand. “Now that you’ve talked amongst yourselves about some of the symbols in here, I want you to think about _why_ they are there. What do they add up to?”

Her eyes ran their scan of the classroom again, flitting from desk to desk.

The girl in front of Eddie rustled in her seat, paging through her notebook as though she had the answer written down somewhere. Another boy in his line of vision turned to look around the room, trying to figure out if anybody knew what the hell she was even asking.

The teacher looked like she was about to rephrase the question when her eyes lit up on some point behind Eddie.

“Yes, Chris, what do you think?”

“Um,” the voice rumbled awkwardly from the back-right. “Honestly, I just don’t understand why we need to read this. When are any of us gonna have to know how to survive on an island? I mean, wouldn’t we just die if the plane crashed like that?”

Eddie’s mouth tugged up, amused and slightly impressed. Instead of voicing his concurrence, however, he tilted his head back and grinned at Chris over his shoulder.

“Some of us should stick to football, blondie,” he jabbed.

For a second Chris just blinked at him, confused as to why this boy who kept his mouth quieter than their hometown was suddenly coming at him. Addled, he turned his palms up on the desk, a universal symbol of exasperation.

“What?” he stumbled. “I don’t even play football.”

The instructor turned back to Eddie, challenging him with a look.

“Actually, Chris brings up a good point,” she noted, looking out to the class. “Sometimes the best way to read these books is by imagining what it would mean if we were in them.” Her spotlight returned, squaring on Eddie’s desk. “For example, Mr. Gluskin, why don’t you engage? Tell me: who would you be if this class were stranded on the island?”

Eddie peeled back the top right corner of the book. “I don’t know about myself,” he answered, winking at Chris. “But I think I found the class a Piggy.”

Chris slammed his palms down on the desk, jerking the chair out from under him. The class turned towards the grating squeak, voices rising in the classroom.

“Settle! Be quiet!” Ms. Wagner boomed with her eyes hardened on Eddie, then pointed a warning finger at Chris, who was steaming offense through his nose. “Quiet, everybody! You can sit back down, Chris.”

On a final note, she pointed at the door. “Eddie. Leave.”

She was barely out of college, achingly girlish in most of her qualities, but her commands still carried power.

Scowling, Eddie pulled his backpack off the floor, slinging it around his shoulder. With the flat of his hand, he smacked the paperback off his desk, sending it thudding onto the ground.

So what? he thought as he banged through the classroom door, faces frozen hungrily in scandal as his classmates watched him leave.

He’d go back to the counselor’s office and she’d feel bad for him because his sternum was purple.

_Lord of the Flies_ reminded him of trauma, he’d tell her, and never have to flick another fucking page again.

✍

After the school day had ended and most of the kids were stacked inside the yellow buses, Eddie lingered. He wrapped his father’s heavy jacket around himself (taken without asking) and curled up on the bench, studying the parking lot. Busy getting scolded all afternoon, he’d forgotten to mentally prepare for the long walk home.

Taking the time to do it now was fine though. He eyed the changing leaves. Carolina got cold as hell, but there were a few good fuckable weeks between summer and winter.

The gym’s double doors crashed open, startling him out of his calm.

Chris didn’t even see him as he exited the building, face aflush with sweat, and panting. He had a pair of boxing gloves tied together and slung over his shoulder in a shock of red, the only instance color on his body, all bare skin but for a white tank top and gym shorts.

“Hey blondie,” Eddie called out to him as he passed, mouth curling into a sly smile. He balanced his head on his knees. “Thought you said you didn’t play football.”

With a guardedly annoyed expression, Chris turned back to him. No- Eddie was wrong. His eyes were miles more blue than the mitts were red.

“I don’t,” he responded. “These are _boxing gloves_. And. And I don’t even box, I wrestle-”

He cut himself off when he saw Eddie’s upturned eyebrow, clearly toying with him.

Chris sighed, surrendering. He rolled his shoulders to reposition the duffle bag carried on his non-boxing gloves side. He looked at Eddie with benefit of the doubt. “Why’d you do that?” he asked.

Smiling still, Eddie cocked his head. “Why did I call you fat in front of our English class?”

To his surprise, Chris’ eyes softened. He returned Eddie’s look with a lopsided grin. “Nah. I meant why did you destroy your copy of _Lord of the Flies_? You got the good cover, douche bag.”

With that, he bent over to unzip his workout bag and tossed Eddie’s paperback to him.

The black-haired boy caught it between his hands. The cover tore off clean somewhere during the motion; he laughed and threw its pieces to either side of the bench.

“It’s a shitty book,” he lazed. “We already know men are selfish and cruel. Don’t need some British boys to teach me that.”

Chris squinted at him for a second. “I think I know you,” he spoke unpromptedly, trying to place the male. “Were we in the same school before junior year?”

“Elementary, middle, and yes, both years of high school,” Eddie offered, uncurling his body and putting both feet on the ground. “Couldn’t have missed ya. Loud and big.” He winked. “Seen you wearing a jersey with your last name on it.”

The backhanded descriptions flew right over Chris; recognition filled his face.

“Oh, yeah, no, that jacket’s my uncle’s. Also a Walker- old, old quarterback. Not me.” He shuffled sheepishly. Guy probably felt more confident with a punching bag than a conversational partner. Eddie couldn’t place blame. He didn’t feel dissimilar. He hugged the jacket around himself where Chris couldn’t see.

“Fuck, it’s actually really cold,” the blonde said after a beat of silence, leftover sweat stinging in the evening chill. “I’m gonna go.” He hoisted up the strap of his bag and gave Eddie a weak smile, walking into the setting sun of the parking lot.

None of the leaves changed color in front of Eddie’s eyes, but he did see the beaten metallic of Chris’ car turn black from the onslaught of the low, red sun.

He drove off down the hill and Eddie stood up to walk home.

✍

Eddie closed the front door, shrugging the jacket off his shoulders and throwing it back onto the coatrack. The heat was on and he didn’t know if it was his fuckup for not checking the dial that morning, or if one of his parents had intended it.

He got his answer when he heard his name called from another room.

Following the timbre of the voice, he wound his way through the front hall, padding over the plush wall-to-wall carpeting of their house, then slipped through the doorway of the home office. His father was seated at his desk, a green sea-glass lamp lighting his work.

His dad looked up at him, the wrinkles around his mouth pulling into a tempered frown. For whatever reason, Eddie’s first thought was about his likeness to a tree, from the tautness of his skin, to the height at which he stood, to the way his limbs could stretch around you in an embrace or whip the color out of your face.

“Hey, I realized today, you’re going to be 18 during the next election,” the man spoke, turning a form over on the desk to face Eddie. “I want to get you signed up so you can vote.”

Cautiously, Eddie stepped towards the desk, sliding the paper towards him.

“Fill that out so we can turn it in before 5,” he instructed, voice less commanding than usual. “And we can get something to eat while we’re out.”

The words were careful, scripted. Scribbling his date of birth, Eddie eyed him when he wasn’t looking. There had been no real greeting, no asking about his day, but one glance and Eddie saw regret eating at the man’s face. It was always like this and still Eddie felt his heart clench guiltily. If he wasn’t so insolent all the time, maybe he wouldn’t incite his father the way he did. Then this sadness wouldn’t be hanging over their house. Then his mother would get out of bed to join them for dinner.

He brought her back a plastic container of fries later that night, sitting down beside her in the orange glow of her bedside table. She smiled as he told her about his day.

✍

Chris wasn’t in any of Eddie’s other classes.

Actually, they had been in standard-level algebra, chem, and gym together until first week of September, but Eddie had been moved down a couple rungs and his schedule got rearranged. The new classes were boring, easy as all hell, but at least his teachers expected their C2 students to sleep more than they listened.

Sometimes, in Ms. Wagner’s class, Chris dared to throw him sharp smiles from the back of the room.

He was either unafraid of Eddie making a target out him or knew that nobody cared enough for it to matter. Either way, his logic was right.

Plus, for all Eddie’s teasing, Chris was the only one who seemed to understand his vocabulary when he made snide comments in class. That, or he was the only one to have also read the book, at least well enough to understand the jokes.

Today Ms. Wagner asked her students to identity any literary devices they’d come upon in their assigned reading.

Eddie complained about wanting to gouge his own eyes out along with Oedipus after dealing with such heavy-handed foreshadowing. Chris snorted, rolling his eyes.

He didn’t understand why Eddie, a student who didn’t have to bat an eye for his A’s, had started using his intelligence to ostracize himself.

Deflecting the attention away from Eddie’s trouble making, Chris raised his hand and talked about irony. His teacher’s eyes sparkled over him, as they always did.

✍

There was some dramatic irony running downhill at lunchtime, too.

Chris wasn’t the kind of guy to spend his free time in the library, but there was some sort of relationship feud going on in his friend group, so he’d followed his preferred half out of the cafeteria. He now sat on the edge of the table with them, smiling.

His friends were all fiercely competitive and athletic to some degree.

Rayleigh played lacrosse and apparently dealt her boyfriends blows as severe as her swing, expressing loudly the smallness of her ex’s dick. That ex’s previous best friend, Mark, grinned in a display of teeth, shining wickedly. He was lithe on the field and more loyal to this new girl than the kindergarten friend he’d left sitting in the cafeteria.

Out of all six faces at the table (generally comfortable enough with each other to make any combo work), Chris was closest to Grace. She was built even more like a tank than he was, and by coincidence, wore the modern-day quarterback letterman that Eddie had assumed Chris sported.

He turned his head to her, arms folded.

“Think she’s being honest or is she just scorned?” he asked, just loudly enough for the rest of the table to hear.

Sandwich in her hands, Grace didn’t miss a beat. “I heard that when you cheat on someone, your dick shrinks like 3 sizes. So maybe.”

“Is that why you look like a girl?” Trevon prodded on her other side.

She sneered, dropping her lunch to pull back her shoulder-length brown hair. “I _am_ a girl,” she responded, “And I could wrestle every one of you into the ground.”

Chris smiled and unfolded his arms. “Except me.”

“You don’t count,” she shot back quickly but subsequently looked up at him with a genuine smile.

People made fun of her, but Chris loved her broad shoulders and the cutting way she spoke. He loved to watch her at the games, barreling through walls of meat, and even after, giving no fucks when she took off her helmet and consistently pissed off a dozen athletes into making period jokes. The coach had apparently asked her to keep it on for her own safety, at least until the bleachers cleared, and she’d made a joke about the integrity of _his_ uterus.

Chris was about to respond to her when he saw Eddie exit through the doorway of the library, walking quickly, his collars pulled up to his cheek bones.

“Sorry,” Chris murmured distractedly, pushing off the table. “Watch my stuff.”

A questioning Grace vanished behind as he trailed after Eddie. He entered the hallway in just enough time to see the male step into the stairwell; Chris turned his head around the corner and watched him descend, pushing out through a fire-exit. Eddie dropped his backpack between the crack in the door to keep it open.

Chris followed, peeking outside.

Eddie was lighting a cigarette. Hand shaking, he then used his free hand to drag a palm up his face, wiping away long trails of tears. He was shivering. He bit down hard on the end of the cigarette and the entire stick fell to the ground.

A terrible thrum started in Chris’ chest.

✍

“You okay?” Chris asked him in the hall the next day.

Eddie whipped his head around, eyes aflame with anger. They cooled off in seconds, returning to the same dark embers that were usually set into his head.

“Fuck. It’s just you,” he sighed, shoulders relaxing. Coming to a complete stop, he let his body lean against the lockers, resting his head against the metal. “What did you want?”

“I want to know if you’re okay,” he repeated. “You look like shit.”

With narrowed eyes, Eddie tilted his head. “Thanks,” he said shortly, then wound around to walk away.

“Seriously.” Chris reached out and grabbed his backpack, pulling him back. “Who’s bothering you? How’d you get that black eye?”

“What do you care, _fatty?_ ” he sneered, just trying to get Chris away from him.

The insult didn’t do any magic. Even worse, Chris responded with, “I don’t really care about words, Gluskin, but if somebody’s physically hurting you I can make them regret it. It isn’t right.”

Eddie twisted out of his grasp, pulling away fiercely. Two girls were walking through the hall, clutching one other and laughing nervously at the display. Humiliation ran hot down his core.

“ _Do you need something?_ ” he snarled at them, slamming his fist against the locker.

The girls startled, clinging harder to each other in a thrill of anxious giggling.

Chris stepped in front of Eddie, catching eyes with them.

“Go away,” he said firmly, nodding his head in the direction of the hall.

Once they’d scampered around the corner, Chris turned back, frowning. “Seriously, Eddie, what the fuck is going on with you?”

Teeth chattering a little bit, Eddie pulled the edges of his jacket over his chest. “Things have been rough. Doesn’t matter. Not like I don’t deserve it.”

Chris looked sadly at him. Eddie wasn’t sure if it inflamed or doused his temper.

“I don’t like seeing you like this,” he spoke honestly.

The entire sentence felt out of place to Eddie. “You’ve hardly ever even seen me.”

Chris shrugged, lips curled in a sympathetic pout. “You’ve got spunk. And you’re cool. And mean as a bitch, but you’re not usually like this.”

Eddie’s face sunk. He wasn’t used to people noticing him. He didn’t like to consider that people might have thoughts formed about him.

The sound of footsteps rounding the corner broke the sudden and strange nature of the moment.

“Boys!” the monitor yelled, clopping forward. “Class started ten minutes ago. Who are your housemasters?”

Chris was about to turn and explain the situation when he felt Eddie’s hand clamp around his wrist, jerking him forward. Before he knew it, he was breaking out of the tug and running all on his own, speeding after Eddie. The woman yelled after them, her voice booming down the hallway.

They scrambled around the corner, Chris’ huge strides inevitably outpacing the younger.

“Chris!” Eddie whispered forcefully from a few inches behind. He’d stopped and was now holding open the door to the bathroom.

The blonde skidded to a stop and used to motion to propel him back towards Eddie. He ducked below the older’s arm and they slipped into the bathroom together, using their bodies to buffer the sound of the door slamming.

“Come on,” Eddie urged him, directing him towards the handicap stall. He jumped up on the toilet after having locked the door, concealing his feet from sight. Chris mimicked him, stepping up on the other side. He wobbled and finally hunched over, balancing his weight against the wall.

“Why did you make me do that?” Chris hissed at him under his breath, holding his balance. He jolted when Eddie redistributed his weight, almost falling off the thin strip of plastic.

“You had the good sense to save your ass, that’s not-”

The door swung open and Eddie shut up, Chris’ hand smashing down over his mouth. He exchanged a glance with Chris that was equal parts fear and humor. They held their balance. Then his elbow slipped and the toilet flushed beneath them.

Their eyes both went wide, grappling for purchase. They stood frozen, staring at each other. The world hung in that one moment for an eternity of terrible suspense.

Then door closed, a pair of heeled shoes speed-walking further down the hall.

They both let out their breath. Then they started laughing.

Eddie jumped down from the toilet seat, leaning against the wall. He panted, the exhales broken up by staggering laughs.

“I needed that,” he confessed, watching Chris step back onto the ground.

Chris felt something warm and pleasant flush through him. “Me too,” he admitted. As much as he loved his friends, their social life had become somewhat of a routine: chill at lunch, hang out afterschool at the track, go to parties on Friday or Saturday, watch each other’s games, etc. etc.

They had fun together, yeah. But nothing spontaneous enough to get his heart thrumming in his ears like it was now.

He shook his head, amused and worn out. “Listen Eddie, I’m gonna get to fucking class, okay?”

Eddie slumped against the wall, smiling.

“Yeah, you do that, kissass. See ya?”

Chris smiled back at him. He slipped his hands into his pockets, drawing in his shoulders. “See ya.”

✍

From then, there was no pretense about pre-formed social groups or the awkward merging of different personality types. They were just friends.

They locked eyes for group activities and sat down together every third lunch of the week.

So when Chris saw Eddie shuffling home in the rain, using his backpack as his only covering, Chris pulled up to the curb and reached across to push open the door. “You need a ride?” he called over the rainfall and wind.

Shivering, Eddie jumped in, slamming the door closed. He threw his backpack onto the ground and immediately turned the heating vent onto him. He was soaking wet.

“Shit, sorry,” he chattered, sloughing off his jacket. “I’m ruining your seat.”

A car beeped at them from behind, pushing Chris to get moving again. “Nah man, I bought it from a place one rank up from a junkyard. Do whatever you want to it.” He glanced at Eddie, the clothes plastered to his body. “It’s my fault anyway.”

Clicking around for a seat warmer, Eddie regarded him curiously. “Your fault for wh- _oh._ Yeah. Tropical storm Chris.”

The younger’s mouth twitched, impressed with Eddie’s quickness. “Where do you live?” he queried.

Eddie gave him the name of the neighborhood and then started in with directions, but Chris cut him off.

“No, I know where it is,” he explained, “That’s just a long fucking walk from the school. You do that every day?”

The rain drummed against the top of the car, making it difficult to talk without straining their voices. Still, it made Eddie feel safe. He felt like the weather was wrapping around the vehicle to conceal them, excluding the rest of the world from their private vessel.

“Yeah,” he hummed, vaguely wondering if the markings around his eye were still visible at all. “There’s a bus that gets pretty close, but I need time outta my day to think.” And if it helped him spend less of that time at home, all the better.

“So what do guys like Eddie have to think about?” Chris inquired after a moment, lazily gripping the steering wheel.

He considered. “Same things you decide to wreck cities over, maybe.”

Chris’ mouth twisted in a grin. “A soggy outfit barely counts as a city.”

“Barely,” Eddie echoed.

He looked out the window until his lane rose up. Hitting him unexpectedly, he felt suddenly embarrassed by the wealthy exterior of the houses. People here had trellises, gates, and picture windows. So did his own. He had no idea what kind of living conditions Chris came from, but there were sometimes holes in the boy’s t-shirts.

“This one,” he said, pointing to their two-story, gray paneled house.

Chris turned in, parking in front of the side entrance. Eddie’s father hadn’t turned on the porch light, nor was his car in the driveway.

“So, uh, hey,” he attempted, pulling his drenched backpack into his equally drenched lap. “It’s only supposed to be like this for another hour, right? If you wanted to kill some time at my place, I could make you a meal or something.”

Chris’ heart leapt at the idea of a hot meal. He turned off the engine, settling into the quiet of the car.

“Sure, that sounds nice. If it’s okay,” he murmured trying not to sound too eager. The older made an acceding sound.

In exchange, he grabbed Eddie’s bag for him, pulling it over his shoulder. “Ready?” he braced, gripping the door in anticipation of the run.

They sped laughing through the rain, fighting against the wind, and finally clambered up the stairs. Eddie let them inside, dripping wet on the carpet. They walked right through the main hallway, past the stairs facing the front door, and onto the tile of the kitchen. After about fifteen minutes, Eddie had prepared Chris a scramble of eggs and bacon bits and red pepper.

The blonde ate voraciously. Eddie tried not to laugh at him as he snacked on an apple.

“They really work you that hard over high school wrestling?”

Chris shook his head between another forkful. “Nah, I just do it ‘cause I like it. Used to get really angry as kid and beat up fifth graders. This is better for everyone.”

The new information settled gently into Eddie.

“Chris Walker was a bully,” he purred back. He noticed how comfortable it was to sit slouched at this table with Chris, conversing languidly with each other. Much different than the stiff-necked meals that he and his father (and sometimes mother) suffered in the dining room.

“Yeah, but,” he said through a mouthful, “Now they cheer me on when I do it.”

For some reason, Eddie felt an indescribable surge of pride. “Good fortune, then. Hey, I’m gonna get changed real fast,” he said, getting up and tossing the core of his apple into their compost bowl. “Because unlike you and your car, my dad will literally kill me if I damage his furniture.” He was mortified when Chris looked up at him, not showing any sign of taking it as joke. He ducked his head. “So yeah. I’ll be right back.”

He walked down the hall and entered into his room.

It was a weird, low place for a bedroom, especially since his parents’ room was upstairs, but he felt cozy in his low-to-the-floor bed, surrounded by his bookshelves. He had a window right above the mattress that looked out over their street, which was good for figuring out when his dad was coming home.

He peeled off the sopping clothing, dropping them in a pile on the floor. Then he searched his dresser for a pair of pajama bottoms and a t-shirt to replace his school outfit with.

After cracking the door back open, Eddie kneeled down on his bed and lifted the window open. Rain splattered off the sill and onto his bed, but it was enough of a crack for him to light a cigarette and spit the smoke back outside.

“Hey,” Chris voiced hesitantly, appearing in the doorway. “Sorry, I just wondered if you wanted me to wash everything.”

Eddie brushed away a couple of wet, clumpy ashes, then stamped the cigarette against the outside of the house and dropped it into the bushes below.

“No, leave it. I got it.”

“Thanks, Eddie. Wait.” His attention broke, veering to the right. “Do you have an Atari?”

Starstruck, Chris walked over the square tv that Eddie had screwed into the wall and set up on one of his shelves. The gaming system was just below it, wedged between a bookend in the shape of a horse and his board games. “You can play like, all the arcade games at home. None of my friends even have one.”

Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know. Those things hurt my head. You want it?”

Chris turned back, looking scandalized. “For just a ride home?”

Scowling to himself, Eddie looked down at his comforter. He didn’t need to be reminded that he had no experience with friends.

“Errrrr, hmmmm, I can’t,” Chris finally settled after giving it another lustful gaze, moving closer to Eddie. He sat down on the floor at the foot of the bed, crossing his legs. “But I do wanna come over and play it sometime.”

“I mean it,” he insisted. “I give no fucks. Take it.”

Chris blushed and looked down at his lap. “I, uh, don’t have a tv or anything. I mean, there’s one in the living room, but that’s basically my aunt’s bedroom.”

“Oh. Your aunt lives with you guys?” Before he forgot, Eddie offered Chris a cigarette, but he shook his head.

“It’s me and her other kids,” he explained, not sure if he felt embarrassed or humbled. “She did my mom a favor and took me in. My mom’s actually trying to get me a job where she rings up groceries, but I dunno how I could do that _and_ school _and_ taking care of all the kids.”

“And smashing bitches on the mat?”

Chris smiled arrogantly. It gratified Eddie more than he could understand.

Thoughtlessly, the words streamed out of his mouth. “Hey Chris, can I read you something?”

Chris looked up inquisitively as Eddie closed the window, shutting them against the rain. Eddie’s bedroom was unlit and fairly dark from the gray of the clouds. It was so cozy that Chris felt he could curl up and sleep on the floor better than he could in his own bed. At least here there were no children pounding at his door, which didn’t lock.

He nodded with a shrug. “Sure, but I thought you hated reading.”

“Mmm, I hate fiction,” Eddie responded, leaning over to pluck a thin book off the shelf by his bed. “But I like poetry.”

There was tab sticking out of one of the pages.

“So, uh, remember when I thought you did football?”

Chris nodded.

“It was just cause when I think about you, I think about this poem by James Wright. I don’t know why, I just always have. It’s my favorite. You wanna hear it?” He waited for Chris to nod before scanning the words with his eyes.

His fingers rustled against the page and then he began reading aloud in a quiet voice, competing with the rain.

“ _In the Shreve High football stadium,_  
_I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,_  
_And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood_ ,  
_And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,_  
_Dreaming of heroes._

_All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home._  
_Their women cluck like starved pullets,_  
_Dying for love._ ”

__

He spoke in the same muted, understated tone throughout, gentle as touching a page during silent reading. Chris’ face transformed from amiably entertained to creased in contemplation.

“ _Therefore,_  
_Their sons grow suicidally beautiful_  
_At the beginning of October,_  
_And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.”_

Chris didn’t say anything after the poem had ended, just gathering himself. He could have tucked the Atari under his arm and still not felt this strange sense of unpayable centeredness.

“That makes you think about me?” he asked quietly, not sure at all how to feel or what any of it was intended to mean. “I…” he stumbled. “I don’t know, it’s just, no one’s ever said something like that to me before.”

That seemed to upset Eddie. Worriedly, he closed the cover and set the book down on his bed. “Sorry.”

“No-” Chris tried to backtrack, fumbling. “I mean. Can I borrow it?”

Eddie nervously handed the book to him, a different person. Changed from the angry kid dealing blows at him in a public forum. Changed from the stride-taking outsider who looked confident enough to be his own friend group. Changed from the angry and bruised friend who found a way to make him feel more alive than since he could remember.

Now he was somewhat of all three. He didn’t know why, but all of them made sense and Chris wanted to sit closer to him.

Later that night, Chris would try to figure out what the words meant, since he was never too great at that sort of thing. Without accomplishing it, he would quickly move on to trying to figure out what part of him Eddie saw in those words.

Then he would think about Eddie and his wet clothes dumped on his bedroom floor, and feel a strange part of himself crack open.

He fell asleep feeling unsettled and confused, the pit of his stomach burning and then icing over.

✍

It was gone by the time he walked downstairs for breakfast.

A child latched onto his forearm before he had even reached the bottom of the stairs. He growled playfully and swung Lori off her feet, whisking her through the air. Giggling through a loss of breath, she screamed in delight when she hit the ground again, falling to her knees.

“Chris,” his aunt warned harshly from the living room couch, lying under an electric blanket. “Don’t touch my kids. Make them a grilled cheese.”

Lori squealed in protest, but Chris shushed her.

“Come on,” he said, scanning the room. He found Paolo hiding behind the armchair in the center of the room, eyes wide and frisky. Jack, almost as old as he was, was already in the kitchen, sitting on the floor and playing with a bag full of dice.

Mariana was the only one of his cousins not around anymore, but she was a junior in college and spent most of the year at her boyfriend’s house.

“Grilled cheese!” Lori repeated to him, her smile missing most of its enamel components.

A shape darted from the living room and ran into the room

“I want tomato,” Paolo said as he crashed into the cabinet, nearly tripping over his older brother’s legs. They all had darker skin tones except for Lori, who had come sometime after his aunt’s husband died. If she even knew who Lori’s DNA was shared with, she never pursued it. The boys had often made the girl cry about it whenever she innocently referred to their father as hers, too.

Already disheartened by the shitty slices of white bread and sickly-orange American cheese, Chris sighed into the fridge. “I dunno about tomato, ‘Lo. How bout extra butter?”

Paolo stomped. “That makes it soggy,” he whined.

Gathering the ingredients, Chris set up on the counter and started assembling the sandwiches into a pan.

“I’m gonna go to the grocery store today,” he said, buttering the outside of the bread. “Just write down what you want this week and I’ll see what I can get. Cool?”

He had been wanting to see his mother anyway. She was almost always there on the weekends.

Lori dropped to the floor to try to play with Jack’s game but he snatched it away, making her wail. Chris pinched his nose, putting the pan onto the stove. His aunt was yelling at him from the other room, telling him to stop instigating.

“Jack,” he warned, a little harsher than he was with the rest of them. “Let her play. You can have the first grilled cheese.”

He scowled. “I can make my own fucking food.”

He let out a long exhale. “Okay. Well then, Lori, leave your brother alone and _you_ can have the first one.”

She sprang up, bouncing over to him. “I want a butterfly one,” she said ditzily, wrapping her arms around his legs and bending so far back he was surprised when she didn’t fall and smack her head against the tile.

“Sorry girly, I just told Paolo we don’t have tomatoes right now- did- did you just bite me?”

She let out a muffled giggle through the few teeth she’d sunk into the fabric of his jeans.

When they were all set up at the table and the pan was washed, he took his own sandwich and walked into the living room. “I need money,” he said over the volume of the news. “I have to go to the market.”

She grumbled something in response, but he made himself taller before she could steamroll him.

“Come on Sherie, you don’t get to act put out. It’s been two weeks since the last trip. Kids need more than cereal.”

She was pretty mean and her kids were scared half to death of her, but she didn’t intimidate Chris. She was just irrational, nothing worse. Still, he’d normally steer clear of that kind of person, but when there were children involved, it activated some kind of override that sucked out all his fucks.

She muttered to herself but dug into the pocketbook on the floor, dredging up a twenty.

“Thank you, auntie,” he charmed her, giving her shoulder a pat. “Need anything special while I’m out?”

She shook her hand, lying back down. “Get out of here, you snake.”

Once he was finished shopping, he did a scan of the cashiers until he saw his mom manning the 5th lane, her scraggly dyed hair outgrowing her dark roots. He lifted the basket around his arm and entered her line, uncrumpling the 20.

Her face lit up when he got close enough to unload and he smiled at her.

“Hi mom.”

“Hey, Chris,” she said quietly, her voice cautiously happy. She acted like she was the one intruding but it wasn’t like she was showing up at the house or anything. He was the only one who ever initiated contact. He tried extremely hard not to resent her for it. “How are you?”

“You know, I’m fine,” he answered, placing down his purchases. “I like my classes. But the AP’s are hard.”

Her cheeks rosed as she scanned his items. “You’ve always been so smart,” she said to herself, sending everything along to the bagging lady. “You’ll do really well on those tests. It’ll help a lot once you’re in college.”

He didn’t know how to explain that he was seriously considering active duty over college, so instead he just shrugged and said, “Not sure how I’m gonna pay the entry fee. But we’ll figure it out.”

His total came up. “Twenty-two fifty,” she read off the screen. Her eyes swept over him once they were off the scanner, trying to take in everything she never got to see.

“Shit,” he muttered, laying his 20 on the counter. He reached over and grabbed the utility pack of snacks on the conveyer belt, pulling it out of the pile. “They don’t really need this crap. Just take it out.”

His mom stretched out a hand, stopping him. “Don’t worry about it.” She pulled it out of his hand, slid it to the bagger, and then took it out of the total anyhow.

He wanted to argue that that could hurt both of them worse in the long run, but there was no way to get into that without bringing up guilt and over-compensation, which would just make her cry. Exhausted from all of it, he let her steal the snacks for him.

Outside, he leaned against the wall with his mom as she took a smoke break. The smell took him back to Eddie’s room, and even though he craved his mother all seven days of the week, in this moment he just wished he was back in that safe, secret bedroom.

“How’s your friends? How’s Grace?” she asked, watching the cars dart along the front of the store. “You think you’re gonna ask her to junior prom this year?”

“Yeah, if I go, probably,” he rumbled. They’d kissed once at a party last year and it had been an extremely off-putting rubbing of tongues that made him never want to do it again. He’d been promised that would fade with experience, and some of it _had_ dissolved in the unbearable lust he sometimes felt, but it never got less clunky no matter who he tried it with.

“I made a new friend,” he added, wanting to change the subject. “He almost got me into trouble with the housemaster.”

A hot, uncomfortable sensation slid down Chris’ core. It felt like he hadn’t changed the subject at all. He was certain that his mom was gonna look at him and see something really bad.

But she simply laughed, clearing the tension. “ _Really?_ I dunno Chris, at this point, that might be good for you. You’re always so good. Makes me wonder what happened to that angry ten year old who wanted to own an acre of the playground.”

He smiled, looking down at his plastic bags. “I know what you mean." At its worst point, it'd boiled down to: stop beating up kids or be kicked out of the house. "Anyway, you want anything before I bring these home?”

“No, I gotta get back in there anyways. Plus your aunt would not like that at all… but thanks for coming to see me, Chris.” Her blue eyes, completely reflective of his own, darted sentimentally over his face. She hugged him, her tiny body fitting around his bulky frame. “You are so beautiful.”

A loose shard, waiting inside of him, split off and lodged into his heart.

_Suicidally beautiful?_ he wondered briefly.

He wondered it the whole walk home, too.

✍

Chris sat against the wall, his hands on his knees. Eddie was seated beside him in the same position, a cigarette dripping ash onto the pavement.

More than anything else, Eddie was a weird place for Chris to be.

He was uproarious and fearless, smashing through invisible boundaries, but he was also incredibly calming to be around. They’d been in silence for a handful of minutes now and Chris still felt completely comfortable, staring thoughtfully at the track in the distance. Autumn was taking a toll on it, browning the unlucky plants and igniting the fortunate ones.

Eddie shook the cigarette butt and tossed it. Chris grabbed his hand while it was still in the air.

“Woah," he noticed, examining it. "You fighting back now?”

Eddie snatched it away. He curled his fingers, tucking the bruises and split skin of his knuckles underneath his ass. “Trying,” he said shortly, grimacing as the pavement tore at his injuries. “I wish I was big like you.”

Their legs were touching a little bit but it didn’t feel weird.

“Come on, Eddie, just tell me who it is. I can stop them.”

A smile cracked on the older’s face. “I’m not breaking your five-year streak of walking a straight path.”

“Eddie-”

“I mean it. I don’t need to be your prison wife. I can take care of myself.”

Chris didn’t want to settle it there, but for the moment, he let it drop. “Okay… well, do you want a dare?”

The light behind Eddie’s eyes lit up in the shape of a jack o’ lantern. “Give me it.”

He cracked his knuckles preparatorily. “Race me down to the field and beat me to the goal post.”

In another mood, Eddie would have hissed at him about the unfairness of the challenge, but today he ate it up. He didn’t even give his consent- he jumped right to his feet and rocketed off the wall. His momentum built on itself as the hill descended.

Chris called after him. He got to his feet and set himself into a jog.

Eddie was a blur of motion, tumbling down the hill. He stretched his limbs to mimic the form he saw professional athletes use at real competitions and remembered to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth. He stumbled a few times from propelling downward too quickly but kept his footwork diligent to compensate.

A loud, protesting cry ripped from his throat when Chris passed him, not even taking the straight shot down the grass, but following the winding pathway.

Eddie sped up, hitting track. He tore across the red-synthetic surface, chasing desperately after his bullet of a classmate.

His feet met the spongy grass of the inside of the track and his footing went. He tumbled to the ground, limbs flying, breathing so heavily he thought his lungs might burst.

Chris looked over his shoulder, finding Eddie rolling in the grass. He came to a stop and then ran back, abandoning the goal. He dove into the grass and met his friend, grabbing Eddie’s hands and wrestling him into the dirt.

“You lost,” he exclaimed as the male laughed helplessly, then was flung into the air and onto his side. Chris clung to his hands, tangling their fingers. He rolled again and Eddie was underneath him, his black hair strewn among the green strands. “You have to answer my question now.”

Breathless with delight, Eddie fought back, sending Chris plummeting onto his back again. He strained against the solid pin Eddie had on him but it wasn’t hard to reverse it. He slammed them both on their sides, the strength of their arms battling.

“What?” Eddie finally acceded, breath coming out in harsh gusts. “What’s your truth?”

“Who’s beating you up?” he asked again, muscles quivering from the labor. “That dick Derek?” Eddie gritted his teeth, fighting back, but another laugh still escaped him. He didn’t answer. “One of the preppy assholes in school government?” He held Eddie’s wrists down. “… Your dad?”

Eddie’s resistance had stopped being playful.

He roared angrily, trying to tear himself away. Chris didn’t let go.

“Please let me help,” he begged, knowing his guess had hit on the truth. “Let me help you.”

Eddie freed himself, breaking into a sitting position. He panted, eyes wet.

“Fuck you,” he snarled, scrambling away on his ass. “Fuck you.”

There was dirt all over Chris’ pants. Probably his hair and shirt and everything else, too. He flinched at the curse but didn't give up. “You know about my mom and my aunt and all my fucked up family shit,” he reasoned. “You can tell me about yours.”

Eddie spit at the ground in front of Chris, clambering to his feet. His legs were wobbly from the exertion and he stumbled on them, barely able to work his way up to a walk. He didn’t look back, even when he was sure Chris hadn’t followed his sluggish climb up the hill.

He grabbed his backpack and started walking home too, legs burning, sobbing.

Back on the football field, Chris jumped when someone touched him from behind.

He turned and saw Grace. She smiled nonintrusive and put her varsity jacket around his shoulders to keep him warm.

“Hey, I was just hanging out in the bleachers,” she said softly. “You wanna sit with me?”

He got to his feet, leaning against her for comfort. He didn’t feel bad letting her see him cry.

✍

Chris didn’t make the kids dinner that night. He wedged a chair under his door knob and ignored them when they banged, whining for one thing or another. He didn’t even get up to call Grace and say thank you, which might have made him feel better. They had outstanding plans to go to Kirkhill’s Halloween party next week, but even today, it’d been the regular kind of quiet with her. It was almost too quiet for comfort.

He sat down to do some mindless math homework but was inevitably interrupted. It’d barely been a half hour since the last pair of fists came banging on the door. He wanted to smash his chair against it and scare the children as bad as their own mother did.

“Chris,” a voice said through the door, but this time it was Jack’s, who never bothered him. “Someone’s here for you. A guy.”

Chris’ heart stuttered. He got up and pulled the chair away from the door, reopening access to his room.

He walked down the stairs, eternally grateful when his aunt wasn’t planted right in the middle of the entrance. He opened the front door and Eddie was standing there, fidgeting nervous with his hands. Chris shooed Jack away, giving Eddie the look of a man who was starving for acceptance, grateful at even the prospect.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say. How else he could say it.

Eddie swallowed, looking embarrassed. His cheeks were flushed from the cold walk over.

“Can I come in?”

Chris led him upstairs to his bedroom, closing the door and propping the chair back underneath it. The last time Eddie had been over, they’d just hung out in the backyard. His two youngest cousins had been all over him, wanting to play games and color and talk about their lives. As obliging as Eddie had been, Chris was desperate to be alone for once in his goddamn life.

Almost immediately, Eddie sunk onto the floor, hugging his jacket around him. Chris followed him down, sitting in front of him. Eddie wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” he whispered.

Chris put a hand out between them, pressing his palm to the floor. “I won’t,” he promised seriously. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Tears tugged at the corner of Eddie’s eyes. He brought them back to Chris. “He always feels so bad when he does it,” he reasoned. “He always wants to buy me things and teach me about being a better person after. He just gets so angry and once it starts, I can’t do anything to stop it.”

Chris’ hand felt like useless comfort, but he was too nervous to offer any kind of hug. “I’m here for you,” he substituted. “You’re so nice to be around. You’re cool. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

It didn’t seem to permeate at all, but Eddie looked up with a non-threatening snarl in his lip. “You owe me so much now,” he said. “You owe me your darkest secret.”

Despite himself, Chris laughed. “Sure. What do you wanna know?”

They took turns asking and answering. Stupid things, from their favorite movies and subjects to what they wanted to do after high school, then to questions like the worst moment they’d ever had, and to who they’d lost their virginity, and what their home lives were really like.

Chris’ aunt was pissed when she saw that her nephew had a guest and her children were cranky from hunger, but he walked Eddie out with his spirit lifted.

He loved that kid.

✍

It was the day before Thanksgiving and Eddie’s mom was finally out of bed, an apron tied around her waist and mixing stuffing into a bowl. He loved seeing her like this. He was pretending to work on an assignment, but really he was dragging his eyes over her: her pink cheeks, her curled blonde hair, the long dress and oven mitts she had on. She looked healthy.

“Mom, you want me to help?” he offered. The countertops shone in the afternoon sun from his immaculate cleaning of them. It was almost impossible not to clean everything all the time. Now that she was on her feet, he wanted everything perfect for her. He didn’t want to give her any reason to lie back down.

“It’s alright, Edward,” she smiled at him, “You working hard at school is all I want.”

His father hadn’t hit him in a good month. His mom was downstairs again. Things were happy.

His life improved tenfold, he snuck out of the house that night.

✍

Most nights he just went wandering, passing through the shadows of public spaces where no one would see him and report back to his dad. He hadn’t gotten caught yet. Their little town was quiet in the day time, positively dead during the night. He strolled past some of the corner shops, hands stuffed deep into his pockets. The wind rolled down the vacant pavement, chilling in more ways than he was prepared for, and he wished the laundromat or something was open so he’d have an excuse to warm up while putting coins in the vending machine.

This was the place where things came together for him. In the absence of everyone else, with the street lamps and stars echoing across the dark, he felt his life come to its center.

His first notion was to wander over to Chris’ house and just look at it, reflecting. But if he was being honest with himself, he knew that once he was there, it would turn into more. He didn’t dwell on it. Before he could challenge himself, he was plucking acorns off the ground and flicking them at the second story window.

When nobody responded, he flashed his eyes across the side of the house.

He should have left then. Instead, he used the trash barrel to get himself onto the bike shed that was set up on the side of the house. He ducked low, sneaking across the top, and reached Chris’ window. With one more glance across the neighbor’s fence, he rapped his knuckles loudly on the glass.

Movement rippled behind the blinds. Chris, looking terrified, peeked out between them.

He let out a heaving, incredulous sigh and whipped the window open.

“Eddie? What are you doing here?”

Crouching, Eddie put his hands on the windowsill. “Were you sleeping?”

Chris pressed his eyelids down heavily, then dared a glance at the glowing red numbers on his alarm clock. “ _Yeah,_ it’s 1am. Your house didn’t burn down or anything, right?”

A goading smile tugged at Eddie’s lips. “Nah, I just wanted to see if you wanted to hang out.”

“ _Now?_ ”

“Yes, now, pretty boy. Are you busy?”

“I was sleeping,” Chris repeated back.

Eddie squatted lower, giving him a pitying look. “Your bed’s really gonna miss you that bad?”

“Y- yes,” he whined tiredly.

Eddie shrugged. “Fine, go back to bed. But just so you know, I found a really cool place in the woods by your house and I’m going there either way.”

A torn gurgle issued from Chris’ throat. He groaned but threw his covers back and turned to sit in front of the window. There was something about Eddie that Chris was afraid to miss out on, like the next day he could just be gone. He told Eddie to move and then climbed ungracefully out of the window, stumbling onto the top of the bike shed.

“Fine, where?” he acceded.

There was an entrance to a not-quite-formal woodland path up the lane from Chris’ house, a shortcut he sometimes used when he needed to get to the town center. He walked after Eddie in his pajamas, nothing more than socks between his feet and the road, feeling an unfamiliar sort of excitement. It was like they were in a secret world that had been carved out for them. Even in the exact same scenario, it wouldn’t have felt like this with anyone else.

“What kind of place is this?” he asked again. The biting cold of the night was waking him up rapidly.

“You’ll see,” Eddie promised, leading them through the initial thicket and plunging them into the dark of the forest. He pulled a mini-flashlight out of his pocket, illuminating the space. “It’s not far of a walk." After a second of silence and crunching leaves, he spoke again. "So what are you doing tomorrow?”

“Uh, well. Actually, my mom’s gonna come over and cook with us,” he said proudly, breaking sticks with his feet but also sinking into soggy leaves. “I mean, she’s shit at cooking but she does the deserts really well. And she’ll keep the kids off me.”

“Send one of ‘em to my house,” Eddie invited. “I think my mother would feel a lot better with a baby to look after.” His flashlight beam pointed up into uncharted area. “Okay, come check this out.”

In an unmarked part of the forest, there was a hangout spot.

Eddie shone his light on a tire swing that someone had tied to a tree, positioned next to three raggedy mattresses. Crushed beer and soda cans were left discarded all over the ground.

“Eddie,” Chris mumbled. “I think this is just a homeless camp.”

“No, shut up, let me show you. Here. Give me some light.”

Eddie grabbed the rubber tire and ran with it until the cord pulled taut, then clung to it as he climbed onto the toppled body of a tree. He grabbed the rope with his hands and jumped into the tire, planting his legs through the middle.

The swing launched through the air, arcing like a pendulum, until he let go and fell laughing onto the mattresses, landing flat on his back.

“Ohhhh. Did you set all this up?” Chris asked, running over to where Eddie lay.

“Nah, I just found it walking through.”

“What happens if you miss the mattress?”

“You eat shit,” he laughed. “But you’ll be okay if you don’t let go. It’ll just swing back. Just don’t lean into the tree or you’ll smash. Try it.”

Chris tossed him the flashlight and Eddie caught it as he sprung to his feet, getting out of the way. Chris ran with the tire swing, looped his legs through it, and swung back, flinging himself onto the mattress.

After another set of more daring maneuvers, they jumped up onto the tree together, hands gripping the rope in a pattern of Eddie-Chris-Eddie-Chris. His left hand brushed up against both of Chris’ and he stopped to think about how big the male’s hand was compared to his own. Their bodies were smushed together but closeness was nothing strange, nothing new.

“Okay, ready?” Eddie prompted him, getting ready to launch himself into the air.

Chris flashed a bold grin at him. “Go!”

They both jumped, fighting to plant their feet into the middle of the tire.

Before making any headway, Eddie was squeezed out between Chris’ hands. He fell, tumbling to the ground in a dizzying thud while Chris swung through the air and collapsed safely on the mattress.

“Eddie,” he called out, snorting with laughter. “Eddie, are you okay?”

Eddie rolled onto his side, groaning. “I’m dead. I see God.”

Chris laughed, crawling to the edge of the mattress. “Oh nooo, Eddie. Get onto the mattress.”

Dragging himself on his elbows, Eddie made his way to the side of the mattress and grabbed it. His hand curled around something sludgy.

He let out a strangled noise of disgust. “Touch that!” he demanded, beating his hand against the dirt.

“No!” Chris laughed. Eddie tried to grab his hand and force it over but he tore it away. “No! What is it?”

“If I had to touch it, you have to touch it!”

Chris squeaked, pressing one finger against the spot that Eddie had recoiled from. He made a sound between a shriek and a gag, rolling forcefully in the other direction.

“You have aids,” Eddie taunted, jumping to his feet. “Get away from me, you have aids now.”

“You did first!” he complained.

When he’d settled down enough, Eddie crumbled onto the mattress beside Chris, heaving out a huge breath. “Okay, I wanna get out of here,” he admitted, his eyelids tugging. He’d felt like a child for a moment, inhibitionless. Now he needed ten years of sleep to recover from the burst of unexpectedly playful energy.

Chris sat up and turned to him, endeared by the male’s sleepiness. He wanted to stay here forever, in this secret place where no one else existed. He’d never felt closer to anyone. But something about it didn’t feel comfortable- he’d never been this close to a friend and still felt a weird tugging in his chest, like he’d never be able to get close enough. It didn’t make sense. It was hurting him.

They collected the flashlight and started heading back to the street, stiff with the cold, rigid from tumbling all around, exhausted from the middle-of-the-night adventure.

Both shivering, Chris dropped Eddie off the in the shadow behind his house and said goodnight to him.

Eddie lingered, working his eyes up off the ground with his courage.

“I know you didn’t ask for this, but… but can you drive me home?” he tried, looking nervously at Chris.

The male hugged his arms around himself, the wind blowing through him. “Um. I can’t until, like, six. Otherwise my aunt will think I’m up to something. But if you want to hang out until then, I definitely can.”

Comfort sank into Eddie’s pit. “Yeah, I’m just so fucking tired, I know I won’t make it back home.”

Chris smiled warmly. “Climb back up, _pretty boy._ ”

Once they crawled back into Chris’ room, the male made him an outfit of pajamas so that Eddie could lie in his bed and not ruin it. “I think I’m just gonna set an alarm for six so we can fall asleep if we need to,” he spoke, turning around.

“I can sleep on the floor,” he reiterated.

Chris yawned and sat down on the bed. “I’m not making you do that. That sucks.” He evenly distributed the two pillows he usually slept on. “Plus, it’s not weird. You’re like family. I was in a bed with Paolo _and_ Lori before Mariana moved out.”

Hesitantly, Eddie crawled up from the bottom of the bed and slumped into it, his eyelids immediately crashing. “Okay, yeah. Reservations gone,” he mumbled into the sheets.

As soon as Chris had gotten in and pulled the covers over them, the appeal went up thrice. Chris was a furnace of body heat, unignorably present in the bed with him.

It was comfortable at first, but after a moment, Eddie felt an unmistakable ache. The tiny sliver of space between their bodies, permeated by the warmth given off by Chris’ skin, made him feel like he was going to fall apart.

Then Chris turned his head over his shoulder. “Cuddle me,” he requested quietly.

It was low enough that Eddie could have pretended to be asleep and undisturbed. He wanted to take the easy way out, but after only a beat of silence, he ended up rolling onto his side. He pressed his front to Chris’ back, trying not to panic. His breath was coming out in short, scared spurts.

Chris reached behind and took hold of his wrist, pulling Eddie’s arm over him.

In moments Chris was clearly asleep, snoring loudly. Eddie let his arm stay draped over the other’s front, their bodies slotted together. It felt strange to him, doing this with a sleeping body. But Chris had asked him to. He had wanted their bodies to be closer when he fell asleep.

Then Eddie felt something entirely different.

He wanted Chris to wake up. He wanted more. At least, he wanted Chris to roll over and kiss him, or tell him something sweet, or even just hold him back. He felt empty and sick. It was serious enough to make him feel humiliated that he’d ever let himself play around like a child with Chris.

It took him a long time to fall asleep.

✍

Four weeks after Thanksgiving break, Eddie returned to school in a fitful state. He held himself nervously, fumbling, the skin beneath his eyes swollen and dark. Chris only caught a glimpse of him in the morning, a familiar shape in the crowd of backpacks and winter jackets. The floor squeaked under his sneakers from the melted snow that’d been tracked in, but even running, Chris didn’t make it in time before Eddie was ushered into the main office.

On Thanksgiving morning, after they’d risen and gotten Eddie home around 6:30, the male had vanished. Eddie never called him with more plans. Didn’t show up again at his house, even though Chris started leaving the blinds open and paying attention to random noises. Finally, when Chris had tried to seek him out on his own, he’d only met the older Gluskin on the front porch, telling him Eddie wasn’t taking visitors.

On most days, he stayed after school with Ms. Wagner or went down to the gym for wrestling. Today, after the bell rang, Chris got in his car and waited, parked illegally in front of the school.

When the busses forced him out, he drove in circles along the route Eddie used to walk home.

He didn’t find him.

✍

Another week went by. Finally, on the Wednesday before Christmas break, Chris walked into his third period to see Eddie sitting at his desk, his head buried in his arms.

His heart roared to life. The entire winter thawed off him in chunks massive enough to flood the school.

“Eddie,” he whispered desperately as he sunk beside the male’s chair.

The older rolled his head to the side, facing Chris. His features were grayer than usual, his eyes cloudy, cheek bones sharp enough to slit Chris’ throat, and mouth held in a tight, thin line. He looked at Chris regretfully, like Chris was equally wonderful and terrible for him to look at.

“Where were you?” he demanded hurriedly. “What happened to you?”

Eddie shook his head.

“Chris.”

Ms. Wagner’s voice startled him, jerking him around. She nodded in the direction of his seat. “Let’s leave Eddie alone, okay? He’s got a lot to catch up on.”

Chris got to his feet slowly, his lip twitching.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he warned, voice hard.

Behind him, Eddie raised his head, looking up to see Chris planted defensively in front of his desk. Amazingly, Ms. Wagner seemed shocked at his defiance. It looked like Chris’ words actually carried some power over her.

“I want to sit with him,” he said loudly. “I want to sit with him and make sure he’s okay.”

“ _Chris_ , behave yourself,” she hissed, shocked. She bent in, her voice lowered. “I appreciate your compassion for our classmate, but Eddie does not need you drawing attention to him right now.”

His eyes flashed heatedly at her. “Stop treating me like I’m just a ki-”

“It’s fine,” Eddie mumbled from behind. Chris turned and saw him sitting up, wholly ghoulish in a way he’d only ever hinted at before. His voice diffused the situation immediately for both of them. “Can we go into the hall for a second?”

Their teacher bit her lip nervously, not sure what to do. In response, Chris shot her a final intense look that seemed to make her mind up. She closed her eyes and nodded, as though distancing herself from her decision, but let the two of them leave the room.

Eddie walked stiffly to the bathroom beside Chris, avoiding any exaggerated movements that might cause pain.

They weren’t alone when they opened the door. “Move!” Chris shouted at a male washing his hands, his young bully unafraid to show himself if the intentions were good. The classmate recoiled and grabbed his stuff, running out of the room.

“I’m sorry, Chris,” Eddie muttered, stepping back until he met the wall. He sunk down to the floor, putting his arms around his knees and resting his head on the soft flannel of his sleeves. “I got in a lot of trouble when my dad found out I was out all night. Didn’t mean to disappear- don't look like that. It wasn’t your fault.”

Chris stood awkwardly before lowering to Eddie’s height.

“What happened?” he begged.

Eddie looked sharply away, gritting his teeth. He didn’t think he could cry about it again, after crying about it with the doctors and the headmaster and principal, but here he was.

“I fell down the stairs. It doesn’t fucking matter.”

His father had been extremely disappointed at his inability to obey the rules as somebody who lived in his house and was raised under his values. He had expressed that disappointment in the usual way, but with less restraint than was customary. His mom called 911. They didn’t eat Thanksgiving dinner. His mother stopped coming downstairs and Eddie's last chance to have her in his life had been fucking destroyed, all because of him. When it was over, his father cried and cried and brought him take out from restaurants so he didn’t have to eat hospital food.

When Eddie didn't respond to his next question, staring off blankly in thought, Chris thudded onto his knees and opened his arms, pulling Eddie into them. He dragged the smaller male’s body against his own, hands pawing at the back of Eddie’s head like he couldn’t gain a secure enough hold no matter how hard he tried.

“Come stay with me,” he said and Eddie realized his friend was weeping, ten times harder than the mere tears that pricked at Eddie’s eyes. “I’ll figure out how to make it happen. I’ll do anything to make it work. Come live at my house with us.”

Gnashing his teeth together, Eddie wanted to accept. He wanted to so badly.

But he knew he wouldn’t be able to take another night like that, with Chris’ body warm against his own, two males cuddling like they were children or fags. Even if he slept on the floor- even if he slept in another _god damn room_ , he didn’t know if he could take it. It would ruin him.

“I’m okay,” he promised, lurching to his feet, out of the male’s embrace. “Please don’t worry for me. Please.”

Chris stayed crouched, looking up at him with glistening eyes. He really wasn’t afraid of somebody walking in and seeing them hugging. He really looked like Eddie’ pain was one of his own worst ailments.

That night, before falling asleep, Chris ran his hand up and down his penis, imagining the heat of another body curled up close to him in his bed. He’d tried for a long time to not imagine it as Eddie. He’d tried to separate the platonic memory of Eddie’s shape from the imagined one he felt in the bed with him, all those general qualities of spunk and fearlessness and warmth anonymized into some ideal form. He couldn’t make it general tonight. He felt it crying the way Eddie had been crying today.

He stopped masturbating and hugged his arms around himself.

✍

Mariana came home for Christmas, adult in a way she hadn’t been the last time he saw her. Her darker-toned skin was shining with a new kind of health. There was a specific perfumey scent that wrapped all around her person, like she had stepped out of another world. And she had. It gave Chris incredible hope for what he could have when he left here. It gave him hope for all the kids.

Since his aunt used the living space all hours of the day, Chris had brought a plastic tree into the kitchen and put the presents he’d been able to afford around it. Earlier in December, his aunt had also handed him the credit card and asked him sit beside her as she listed all the items she wanted him to go out and buy.

Mariana carried in an armful of gifts that she unloaded under the tree, too.

He wasn’t expecting to get anything from anyone, but Lori had made a clay figure of a cat for him in her art class, and his aunt had put $20 into an envelope, and Mariana handed him his uncle’s class ring, meant to go with the letterman she’d entrusted him with.

Sitting on the living room floor among all their opened presents, he felt tears pull at his eyes. He’d loved having his uncle around. He’d been a sturdy force for Chris that Chris’ absent father never had a chance to fill. That man, loud and Brazilian and honor-driven, had been the one to fight for a bed for him here. They hadn’t even been blood related and he’d done that for him.

Paolo stopped fiddling with his wooden plane when Chris gave a lugubrious thanks to his older cousin. Lori, too, looked at him with a huge empathetic frown. At the moment, Jack was a pre-teen and annoying as fuck, but even he’d been excessively sensitive to emotions as a child.

“I’m fine,” he assured. He wasn’t prone to tears by any means, but the school year had already been an emotional voyage. “Cuddle me,” he added, and the two children snuggled up next to him, Paolo running the wheels of the plane over his leg and Lori laying her head onto his lap, holding a stuffed toy in her hands.

He knew that one day he wouldn’t be their _in loco parentis_ anymore. He didn’t plan on sticking around for college, but he also didn’t know how he could ever leave them before they all became adults. He didn’t know how he could leave Jack to take over his job. He didn’t know how he could leave them.

✍

It wasn’t officially the new year yet, but fireworks were already going off over the lake. Chris huddled close with his friends, all six of them gathered together like penguins. Squished against his right shoulder, Mark passed him a thermos filled with steaming apple cider, thickly spiced with alcohol. He poured some into the cap and drank, then passed it on to Grace.

“What time is it?” he asked again.

It was still 11:30, he was informed, only plus an additional minute since the last time he’d asked.

Eddie had mentioned that he was going to come by right at midnight, and asked if Chris wanted to meet him for a few minutes. His father was trying to make up for his actions by being more lenient, he’d explained, but Eddie only had the energy for a short outing.

A bunch of near-adults, Chris and his friends started playing a tipsy round of truth or dare (in which the only acceptable decision was dare) as they waited for the new year. Grace jokingly asked out a much older man and then ran back, giggling in a way her sober temperament never allowed. Mark drank a mouthful of freezing cold lake water. Chris was about to introduce himself to group next to them as “hi, I’m a retard” when collective voices started counting down the last minute of ’82.

“Oh,” he said, surprised and a little thick-headed. “Promise I’ll do it. Promise. Be right back.”

He patted Grace’s shoulder and speed-walked away from the bank, pulling his hazy vision across the road. He jogged in the direction of the info board, where Eddie had said he’d be.

Standing alone, looking out at the lake, Eddie was waiting.

He stumbled over with his arms open and his chest light, grabbing for Eddie.

The older startled at his sudden appearance, laughing out a stunned “Jesus” when Chris failed to hug him entirely and fell on the ground at his feet.

“Are you very drunk?” he asked, amused, as Chris rolled onto a sitting position.

“You know me so well,” he smiled, looking up.

“I have eyes,” he corrected. Chris’ friends sometimes got annoyed with him when he was playfully drunk, but Eddie seemed endeared by it. It made him feel safe.

The crowd finished counting down numbers and everyone erupted into cheering. Eddie might have yelled too, if he heard Chris doing it, but the younger wasn’t, so he just looked into the sky as the fireworks went off full-swing, exploding in crystals of blue and flurries of red. When he looked down to corroborate the beauty with Chris, the blonde wasn’t even looking at the sky. He was looking up at Eddie’s face, smiling. He let out a nervous laugh, blushing when Eddie returned the gaze, but he didn’t look away.

Eddie’s heart cracked open. Pain shot through every inch of his fucking body. It was too much.

He reached out a hand to help Chris up, steeling himself. His exterior shielded what he was feeling completely. It let him smile, a friendly façade.

“So, that was something. I’m gonna go home.”

“Already?

“Yeah, I just wanted to see the new year. Get back to your friends safely, you lush.”

Chris smiled at him. It was such a warm regard. Eddie’s heart cracked worse. There was no way this was what it felt like it was. There was no way. There was no way it wasn’t.

“Night, Eddie,” Chris said affectionately, reaching out to ruffle his hair.

There were hearts where the blonde’s pupils should be. None of this had a place. None of this had a fucking right to be happening.

“Night,” Eddie mumbled, breaking away before his exterior crumbled.

He walked away swiftly, the cold biting him every step of the way.

When he was home he crawled right into bed and wrapped his arms around himself. It went from a crisis to a tragedy in a matter of minutes. He sobbed until his teeth chattered and his eyes hurt. His broken heart was still inside of him, shards sticking into him at every angle. It hurt so fucking bad he didn’t know what he was going to do.

For less than a second he longed for his father’s brother.

When Eddie was a child, the man used to come stay in the guest room for weeks at a time. He didn’t really know the circumstances. Sometimes his uncle would inch his bedroom door open in the middle of the night and come in and do things to him, but sometimes that also meant he stayed for a little bit after, their bodies curled together.

He knew that that could turn people gay. But even so, he _wished_ that this felt as sickening and evil as that was, because then he could call himself disgusting and make it go away. But it wasn’t like that. He loved Chris. He felt okay around him. Chris looked at him like he was sunlight.

Maybe that was the worst part. He couldn’t even convince himself it was immoral.

Shakily, he got up and wandered into the hallway, where he pulled his father’s jacket off the coatrack. He wrapped it around himself, its puffy wool comforting him.

Maybe if someone had hugged him as a child. Maybe if the only physical contact he had with his father wasn’t delivered in slaps and punches, or if his mom didn’t lock herself away in the bedroom every day…

He went to lie back down and those shards were still there, waiting to spear him again.

✍

“Hey. Wait up.” Chris bounded over to him after school, intercepting Eddie on his walk home. “Can I drive you?”

He stopped in his tracks when Eddie flinched- actually _flinched_ at his voice.

“Damn, Eddie, sorry.” He felt his nerves alight. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

His nervousness extended with every passing second that Eddie didn’t warm to him. The older turned to face him, looking every bit as gaunt as he’d been before the break. They hadn’t spent any time together after New Year’s, but Eddie had called over a few times to let him know he was fine. He had sounded distant. He looked distant today.

His face fell as Eddie just stared at him, unspeaking. “Did- did I do something wrong?”

A car rushed by them, whipping the air around. Eddie shook his head and the look was gone.

“Yeah, of course you can fuckin’ drive me home.” He slumped his shoulders and his backpack slid into his hand. He threw it at Chris, who caught it against his chest. “Cause you missed my company that much?”

Chris grinned and turned on his heels, relieved, sending them walking back towards the parking lot. His expression turned sheepish and he rubbed a hand on the back of his neck while slinging Eddie’s bag over his shoulder. “Well, yeah, and I… wanted to play the Atari.”

He really just wanted an excuse to spend time with Eddie again. He wanted that night in the forest back, but in a way that wouldn’t get them into any kind of trouble. He missed him. There was no one else in the world that’d just let him carry their bag like it was his own, no one else who got tangled up in his mind for days.

Eddie stopped acting weird once they were in the car. Their usual chatter returned, unaffected by the distance. Chris felt the blood fill back into his empty veins.

“Help me with this?” Eddie asked once they were inside his bedroom.

Chris came over and helped him pull the gaming system off the shelf. They were bringing it all down to Eddie’s basement, since he apparently had a bigger tv and couch down there. It was true, too, better than Chris’d imagined. It wasn’t a dingy storage space like the one you could enter from Chris’ back hall, but instead a real living area that he could tell Eddie used a lot. Unlike his tidy room, there were books and comics lying on open spines, containers he’d never thrown away, unfinished game pieces that hadn’t been put back into the box.

“I didn’t think this is what your mind would look like,” he observed

Taken off guard, Eddie’s face twisted into a smile. “What were you expecting?”

After considering for a moment, Chris set the Atari down and started hooking it up to the tv. “I dunno, After you gave me that poem, I kept thinking of horses in the wild. The galloping, I guess?” He flicked the machine on and the room lit up with blue light, tiny pixelated spaceships flitting across the screen like candy, emitting 8bit shooting sounds.

Proudly, he sat down on the couch. “I dunno,” he went on. “I feel like you belong in the wild.”

“Just a second, the poem I gave you?” Eddie repeated. “I think you mean the book that you _took_ and never gave back.” He walked in front of the tv and fetched one of the controllers for Chris. “I…” he trailed, running his thumb pensively over the button. “I didn’t know you remembered that, to be honest.”

Chris smiled up at him when he approached, holding out a hand to receive the controller. Eddie placed it down.

“I read over and over,” he admitted. “No one ever thought about me like that before. That’s why I never gave it back.”

“… Yeah?”

“Yeah, I…” He looked down, holding the controller loosely. “I liked thinking about you thinking about me.”

Eddie let out a helpless whining sound. Chris looked back at him, their eyes locked and frozen, until Eddie forcefully palmed the controller out of Chris’ hand and grabbed him. He felt the male pitch forward, and suddenly the warmth and softness of Eddie’s body was sitting in his lap, their fronts pressed against each other.

His mind shut off. He didn’t know who initiated it, but their tongues were sliding together now, warm and wet, and Chris realized that he was panting starvingly into Eddie’s mouth.

He huffed in surprise when he felt Eddie’s hand in his pants, stroking against him in a way that felt so good Chris wished he could black out and be free from it. He moaned and grabbed Eddie’s sides, pulling him in. Their mouths fit hotly together. It was more than he’d ever felt with anyone, and he was absolutely shaking with terror.

He planted his palms against Eddie’s collars and _pushed_ , hard enough that the male stumbled backward off the couch. He just barely caught himself on stable footing before falling to the floor.

“I’m not like that,” Chris rejected breathlessly, his heart beating too fast. “I’m not queer.”

There was a flushed, dangerous look on Eddie’s face. His expression warped from desire to distress to anger. The blush swiped across his cheeks got no less red.

“Then why do look at me like that?” It started as a sob and ended up curling from the heat of anger. “Why do you _say things like that to me?_ ” he snarled.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Chris responded weakly, chest heaving. He imagined pulling Eddie back on the couch with him and lying down together. He imagined having Eddie intertwined his body and making out to the sound effect of spaceships until he felt whole again.

“How. do you. not know. what I mean?” Eddie ripped back slowly, his eyes burning. Chris flinched under their intrusion.

‘I’m-” he stumbled, getting shakily to his feet. “I’m with someone. I’m already in a relationship.”

“Who?” Eddie barked rhetorically. “Some girl you don’t feel anything for?” Even when Chris flinched again, he didn’t relent. “I _know_ what you’re experiencing. You’re the same as me.”

Shaking, Chris stepped away from Eddie. “You don’t know.”

Eddie stared at him, trying to whittle him down under his scrutiny. He kept stepping away. He hit the stairs and he kept going.

Alone, Eddie let out an angry cry and smashed the gaming system to the floor, sending the tv screaming in a crackle of static. Maybe his dad would be angry enough after work to beat him for breaking it. He hoped so. He hoped so.

✍

The last period bell had rung about ten minutes ago. Chris stalked through the locker rooms, thrusting himself through the maze of metal and into the network of shower stalls. He knew Eddie had gym last period and that he was in here somewhere- he sometimes showered between gym and walking home, and today his bag was still on the middle bench in the changing area.

He wasn’t sure if his emotions were going to be there for him when he found Eddie. He wasn’t sure that one glance wouldn’t dissolve them all. But the sight of the older, fresh out of the shower and pulling on his regular clothes, ignited none of the tender feelings he was used to experiencing. He felt rage.

He stepped forward and grabbed Eddie by the neck, shoving him back into the shower.

Eddie let out a surprised cry, scrambling against the heavy grip. He protested even louder when Chris twisted the shower knob and started drenching him cold water, plastering the clothes to his skin.

“Why did you do that?” he howled, thrusting Eddie against the wall. He was getting wet too but he didn’t care. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

Eddie spluttered against the freezing water. Chris jerked it off again, using his other hand to keep Eddie pinned against the wall.

“You- you told everyone that I was a faggot?” he demanded, whispering. “You said that _I_ kissed _you_ and tried something?”

When Eddie just squeezed his eyes with his head turned away, Chris roared out helplessly. “Do you want to get the shit beat out of me? Do you want to get me sent away?” He gave Eddie rousing shake when the male didn’t answer. “Is that how little I matter if I can’t be what you want me to be?”

“I had to!” Eddie cried suddenly, his eyes shuttered closed. “If I didn’t do it first, you would have. And everyone would have believed you.”

Chris’ hold wavered. His hand, wound back and ready to punch, faltered in the air. “I wouldn’t do that,” he hissed, disappointed and enraged. “I wouldn’t _ever_ do that.” He closed his eyes to stop himself from crying. He felt betrayed and completely misunderstood. “I thought we were friends,” he mewled.

Water dripped down Eddie’s face, streaming off his eyelashes. He opened his eyes. “I thought we were more.”

“Eddie,” he whined. “It’s _illegal._ I would never be able to get a job if anyone found out. My aunt would kick me out on the street. Everything I’ve been working for would be gone. I barely even have what I have.”

“It’s changing,” Eddie begged. “Some states decriminalized it.”

“What’s changing?” Chris growled. “When Reagan called it the “gay virus?” And now everyone already wants to reelect him? When our Spanish teacher was _fired_ after they found out he was living with a man?”

“I-” Eddie started, but Chris slammed him back into the wall, raising his fist. He wanted Eddie to shut up. He did.

After a moment of silence, he shook his head. “I can’t just leave without doing something about this.”

Eddie’s eyes darted from his fist to his face. He looked scared, but he didn’t try to struggle out of his grasp. “Just do it,” he resigned, looking down.

Chris pulled back his arm and heard himself cry out in frustration. He couldn’t stop thinking about Eddie being beaten by his father. He couldn’t do it. He dropped his arm and broke away forcefully, glaring regretfully at him.

“It doesn’t even matter,” he muttered. “Everyone knows you’re full of shit. You know why?” His eyes burned holes through Eddie. “Because you don’t have any friends. No one even likes you. Not even me.”

When he was gone, Eddie smacked his palm against the wall until he couldn’t feel it anymore.

✍

Eddie didn’t go to his English class the next day.

Or the next one. Or for all of that week.

On Friday, he’d gathered his senses enough to realize that he was terrified of her calling the principal and having the office call his father. He’d been aggravating the man all week, and even though the regret of last time was still stifling even a twitch in his fingers, he didn’t know how long that patience would hold up. He was even more scared of what would happen after all that build-up.

As soon as school ended, he rushed to her classroom to speak with her. He was prepared to beg for an assignment and didn’t care if it was dissertation-level work.

Except when he bashfully edged into the room, fitting through the slit in the door, the first thing he saw was Chris’ blonde hair. He was sitting on her desk.

At first, that was scary enough to make him want to whip around and leave. Then he comprehended that Ms. Wager was standing in front of him with her hands on his knees, kissing him.

He spun around and hid himself behind the door, stricken with complete surprise.

For a moment, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t know if he should burst in and say something or wait for Chris to leave and catch him in the hallway. The longer he stood there, the more his uncle came to mind, and it brought a mouthful of bile with it.

He delivered himself to the principal’s office.

✍

On Monday, before he’d even settled into homeroom, they called him down to the office.

They asked Chris a series of random, unstrung questions until they narrowed down to his English class, and finally to the character Ms. Wagner. It played with his confusion and fear enough to be immediately effective.

Frozen, convinced that he’d already been caught and all he could do was contradict proof, they didn’t even have to ask him directly what was going on. He broke down and told them everything.

✍

Eddie was in her class when three administrators and two school officers came to the door and suggested she follow them out of the room. Chris hadn’t shown up either. While they were figuring out who they could call in as a sub, he grabbed his bag and slipped out of the school.

✍

It was almost two by the time he reached the male’s house, body aching from how quickly he’d taken the walk, brain exhausted by how scared he was to be here.

He wasn’t even certain if Chris was going to be home, but he had to try. He jumped up onto the bike shed the normal way, scurrying along to Chris’ window. His fingers hooked under the unlocked screen, lifting it. Then he pulled open the glass and ducked through the window.

“Eddie?” Chris asked from the other side of the room, surprised.

He was sitting at his desk, slumped over with his chin in his hands. His eyes were red and distressed, the skin dragged down by worrying fingers. Eddie kept his eyes on him as he finished swinging his last leg through the window and hobbled over the bed and to the floor.

“Are you okay?” he asked tentatively. All of his drive had been spent on the walk over. Now he was unsure if he should even be here.

Chris seemed to crumble under the question. He looked away, grabbing his lip between his teeth. It seemed as if he might cry again.

“Does everyone know?” he asked as Eddie stepped closer to him.

Regretful, Eddie advanced until he was close enough to touch. “No,” he assured, reaching out to put a hand on Chris’ shoulder. He was too nervous to commit to a full hug but he felt awkward just standing there. “No, they didn’t explain anything. No one else knows.” He swallowed. “Just me.”

Chris’ eyes shot up, realization scorching over his face. He sprung to his feet, face twisted in confusion.

“Wait,” he said, words pulling anger through the distress. “Wait- _you_ did this?”

Eddie went still, his fingers loosening on Chris’ shoulder. Vaguely, he felt Chris knock his arm away with a swing, forcing him back.

The older felt defensiveness rise up. “Well why would you even be stupid enough to do that?” he questioned. “Why wouldn’t you just use your senses and say no? You had no problem doing that with me.”

“She was nice to me,” he shot back, thinking of his mom who was never there, of his aunt who never loved him or even gave him attention.

“She was _nice_ ,” Eddie repeated incredulously. “ _That’s_ the criteria for risking everything you’ve worked for. She was nice to you. What, and I’m not?” He was still sore as fuck from when Chris had burned him.

“No.” He scowled, lips curling in hatred. “You’re really not.”

Eddie growled helplessly. “Well I really don’t think being nice was my main priority in this situation.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Chris tried to yell but his voice cracked into a hoarse whisper. “You don’t understand. Do you know how much trouble I’m going to be in?” he wavered tearfully. “My aunt won’t even say anything to me until my mom comes.”

“Chris,” he explained, “I saw it on accident and had to say something. I was trying to protect you.”

“No, you wanted to get back at me,” he ripped, “You wanted to make me hurt the way I hurt you.”

“That is _not_ why I did it,” Eddie shot back, stepping forward to regain the ground he was denied. He grabbed Chris’ shoulders and refused to let go, his fingers twisting against the fabric of his shirt. “You were being taken advantage of. I don’t give a fuck if it felt like it or not. You were. I wasn’t going to just see that and not- if I wanted you to hurt, I’d have said fuck you and let it happen.”

Chris looked at him, opening his mouth to talk but finding his words jumbled.

“Chris,” Eddie reasoned. “I know what it feels like. It feels normal after a while; it feels like something you want. But it’s not. It’s wrong.”

Chris’ face scrunched in pain. He shot his eyes to the ground before squeezing them closed. He reached up and held onto Eddie’s wrists.

“I was really relieved,” he admitted quietly, teeth grinding as though he could destroy the words in his mouth. “I didn’t know it would last so long. I just thought it would make a good story.” He leaned in and laid himself against Eddie’s front, resting his head. “I’m afraid that they’ll arrest her. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to know. I wanted to stop it on my own.”

Eddie dislodged his grip on Chris’ shoulders and pulled him into a proper hug. The blonde’s arms hung at his sides, not returning it. It was starting to get dark in the room; the cold of the open window was offset by the warmth of Chris’ body.

He felt his heart crack all over again. “Do you love her?” he asked.

“No,” Chris answered, and Eddie’s heart split perfectly down the middle. “I love you.”

Eddie was sure Chris could feel him shaking. The younger’s head was pressed to his collars, wet eyes buried against him. He finally raised his arms up and hugged Eddie back, pressing himself closer.

“Please don’t say that,” Eddie begged in a squeak.

“I mean it, Eddie,” he murmured against his front. “I want to figure out how to do it. I’ve never felt this way before, with anyone.” His voice broke. “I’ve been making so many fucking mistakes. I need you. You’re the only one who ever knows what the fuck is going on.”

Before the older could respond, he lifted his head and kissed Eddie through his tears. He tasted wet and salty and warm, but he was closer than he’d ever been. His body quivered in Eddie’s arms.

Eddie ran a set of fingernails down his scalp, drawing comforting patterns across the back of his neck and behind his ears. He pulled away, letting Chris rest against him again, and sat down onto the bed.

“Come on, blondie, cuddle me,” he said softly, shifting back towards the wall. He let Chris curl up onto the bed against him, pulling the comforter over them both. Chris’ tears were just coming to a stop but he looked completely wrecked, exhausted from too many emotions crammed into one week.

“I’m sorry for everything that I did.” He wrapped his arms around Chris and sank against his pillow, the blonde’s head on his chest. He ran his fingers through Chris’ hair. “Rest for a little bit?”

Chris nodded. “It’s okay, Eddie. I’ll talk to my mom and figure it out. I’ll call you when I can, okay?”

“Okay.”

He got up to go, but Chris pulled him down again. “Stay for a minute?” he invited. “Just stay with me for another minute?”

Eddie relaxed back into the bed. He put his hand back against Chris’ head, feeling more okay than he’d ever been. They both felt it. They were both the same. It was okay.

✍

“ _Chris_.”

The voice tore him from a thick sleep, jarring him. He opened his eyes and saw his mom standing in the doorway, gaping at him in horror.

On his right side, a shape clawed against the blankets and scrambled into a sitting position. He remembered what had happened. Chris shot to his feet.

“What is _going on_ with you?” his mother cried at the same time as Eddie looked around startled.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he breathlessly confessed to Chris, struggling out of the bed. The woman’s eyes flashed back and forth between the two of them; she didn’t look angry, she looked sick. She didn’t even look past Eddie’s presence to see his eyes.

“Nothing happened,” Eddie tried regardless, stumbling over his words. “We fell asleep-”

“How did he even get in here?” she shrilly demanded at Chris. Her eyes snagged on the open window. “Did he break in through the _window_?” She stepped forward, face filled with realization. “Is this the one who you said was getting you in trouble with the principle?”

“I didn’t say that!” Chris shouted back defensively.

“Do not talk to me like that!” Her face filled with disbelief. “What is _happening_ to you?”

Eddie started hopping from foot to foot, agitated. He wasn’t being listened to. Neither of them were.

“I just knew that Chr-”

“First your English teacher, and then _this?_ ” she shrieked louder, pointing a finger at her son. “What is happening to you?” she repeated. “When your aunt let you stay here, she didn’t agree to keep a delinquent. You _know_ this, Chris. And this is so much worse than getting into fights! This is- this is _sinful_.”

“Chris,” he heard Eddie moan suddenly. When he looked back, Eddie was jittering, tearing at his face until the bottom of his eyelids were dragged down and exposing red. “My dad is going to kill me. He is literally going to kill me.”

“Please don’t say anything,” he pleaded to his mom, turning back. “Please just listen.”

“Listen to you defend all this?” She looked like she’d never recover from the shock. “This is not my son.”

Then she said the worst thing she could have.

“I’m calling your dad.”

His heart plummeted.

“Don’t do that,” he begged.

“I don’t have a choice now, Chris! Your aunt isn’t going to let you to stay here. You can’t stay with me.”

“Why not?” he demanded, whining. “Why can’t I? I never understood why you refused to make it work.”

She tried to fuse ten sentences at once, but ended up asking, “Is that what this is about? You’re acting out because you’re mad at me? Putting you here was the _best_ thing I could have done for you.”

“I’m not acting out,” he roared back, “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

That seemed to tip her over the edge. Instead of exploding, she shook her head in stunned disbelief.

“I’m calling your father,” she settled, turning to walk out of the room.

Chris turned to Eddie, who was ashen and frozen.

“Eddie,” he said steadily, trying to hold his voice strong despite his own distress. “Go home. She doesn’t know who you are. If you stay, she’s going to make you go home with her and she’s going to report you to the school.”

Eddie’s eyes darted back and forth between Chris and the hallway. If his father found out about this, he would beat him until he died.

And still, he could hardly even think about himself. “What’s going to happen to you?” he whispered back.

“I don’t know.” Chris' voice was shaking. “If she’s calling my dad, he might send me away. He’s a correctional officer, but maybe- she might make me move down to Georgia with him. I don’t know.” He took in a deep breath to stop himself from hyperventilating. “Eddie. I know what Wright meant by sucidally beautiful.”

Eddie stared at him, unwilling to move.

He feared those moments when he lost something- how he’d have to keep realizing that he lost it until it became normal. The second he stepped out of this room, it would start. And maybe Chris had been worth killing himself over, but Eddie knew _he_ wasn’t. Chris was going to be the one with his life destroyed, and Eddie knew he should have backed off long before this. Chris had known it from the beginning, but he had let Eddie change his mind. And now he was about to lose him in every way.

“Here,” Chris said suddenly, reaching at the edge of his bed frame and pulling off the varsity jacket draped over it. “Take this. Wear it for me.”

Vacantly, Eddie opened his hand for it. His head spun out of his body. “Will you call me when you can?” he asked dazedly. He didn’t want to leave.

“When I can,” he promised. He grabbed Eddie’s hand.

Eddie didn’t think Chris was going to let him go in time. He was certain the mother was going to come back before he could slip out, and then they’d both be ruined. It would have been fair, that way. But he got out and ran the entire way home.

Chris didn’t call back for eleven years.

✍

Chris was deconstructed and built back up in a new way. By the time it was over he was 18, and he enlisted immediately. All of his lingering ideas about college were de-seeded when he never got his high school diploma. Reagan was reelected, then Bush. Nothing changed except for his mind, when he met other people who normalized him. In the military, he unlearned a good deal of what they told him in the camp, but not everything. He fucked men wherever he could and kept his mind as sharp as his morals.

He learned to rely on his body in a new way.

Eddie stopped trying in school. There was an incident where his father responded to his failings a little too roughly, and even though the man never found out about his sexuality, he was almost killed anyway. During his stay in the hospital, he was finally placed into foster care but it didn’t last long, because he turned 18 a couple months later. He found loans for college and was able to apply them to housing. He pursued a handful of people but none of them struck cords with him. He worked instead, channeling his energy that way.

He learned to take care of his body for the first time in his life.

When he wanted to feel close to Chris, he pulled the blonde’s jacket over his skin.

✍

He tried to find Chris. Of course he did.

He harassed the school for the first raw months without him, trying to find out where Chris had gone, but nobody helped. He even got desperate enough to walk by Chris’ house a couple of times. One day he went into the backyard where the children were playing and the lazy woman came out screaming, threatening to call the police on him. Over the years, he’d even reached out to different camps for juvenile delinquency, but no one could tell him anything.

That’s why, after almost nine years of after having abandoned his hometown, he traveled desperately back to the school for their tenth-anniversary class reunion.

Eddie took three days of vacation off from work, reshaved the edges of his hair, and sat down for the drive. He didn’t know if Chris would be there. He didn’t know if he’d even be able to recognize him after all of these years. He didn’t know if Chris would recognize _him_. He didn’t know if he would be there, or if he was alive.

He checked into the motel and put everything down. Then he pulled on Chris’ jacket and started walking to the high school.

He tried to ignore the sensations, but the crispness of the night air was familiar in a way it wasn’t in the southern part of the state. It felt like another night where he crept out of the house and went wandering on his own. Now there were new houses and stores he didn’t remember, and this time, the darkening night wasn’t all he had. He reached the auditorium doors and entered the old gym, lit with bright yellow light and filled with people he had to squint to identify.

His vision snagged on the periphery.

He had been wrong.

He took one look at Chris and didn’t even have to think. The man was ingrained in his mind.

There were people chatting all around him, eating and drinking and exchanging pictures. He passed through them breathlessly to get to the side of the room, where Chris was leaning against the wall and looking out over everything.

“I tried to find you,” Eddie lead.

Chris’ head shot in his direction. He stared at him for a moment, unspeaking, as if he was looking at a ghost that’d dissipate under scrutiny. Then he reached forward and grabbed him. It wasn’t a hug for men of their age; Chris buried his head into Eddie’s neck and wrapped his arms tight around him. His touch felt the same. He smelled the same. There were people embracing all over the room and it swallowed them up, but Eddie knew none of them were feeling this, as he curled his arms around the younger. It was surreal, and happening too suddenly to get a grip on. He’d dreamt about it his whole adult life. The direct memories had all faded with time, but _Chris_ hadn't faded. It was exactly the same as he remembered.

When he pulled away, they didn’t fully dislodge. Chris’ hand stayed on the back of Eddie’s neck.

“I couldn’t come to the first one,” he rushed. His voice was rougher than Eddie remembered, but like everything else, it was the same. “I went to the five year. I didn’t see you.”

“I didn’t go,” Eddie laughed. His eyes ran up and down Chris’ front, trying to absorb everything. “At that point, I’d given up,” he admitted, thinking he could cry with a smile still on his face. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. It was hard to keep trying.”

Chris looked at him with painful sympathy. His expression changed suddenly and he grabbed a handful of Eddie’s long sleeve. “You’re wearing this,” he noticed, as though it had a million answers woven into it.

“Can we leave?” Eddie asked, glancing at the surplus of bodies all around them. “Did you really want to come to this?”

“No,” Chris laughed, squeezing his arm through the fabric. “No, I came to find you.”

They walked back into the night, away from the volume of the reunion. Once they were on the main streets, more alive after dark than it had ever been in their youth, Chris let out a strong “Shit.” He ran his eyes up the buildings. “I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe you’re with me.”

Eddie stopped for a second, smiling sadly. Chris turned to see what had stalled him.

“You know nothing’s actually different, Chris,” he voiced softly, the words filling the air with his visible breath. “The world’s the same as we left it.”

“ _I’m_ different,” Chris said honestly. “I served for six years. I met a lot of people. I don’t think the same way I used to.” Being with Eddie, who looked just like an older replica of the person he’d known, made it hard for Chris to remember he wasn’t the same teenager. But after seeing everything he did, after being the only one who could protect his life in the face of imminent danger, he’d learned to trust his own voice more than anything anyone else was telling him.

“You were in the military all this time?” Eddie asked.

“Most of it.”

Eddie, thinking, gradually met his eyes. “I’m not sure what to say, Chris. If you want to get home and keep in touch, I can give you my number. Or- you can come back and stay with me tonight. If you want to.”

Chris softened at Eddies’ words. He hadn’t realized there was ambiguity on the other side. Eddie was wearing his jacket and seeking him out, so it was clear for him. But he knew Eddie was afraid of being hurt. He’d fight back against even the most hyperbolic of hints out of the fear he’d made a false assumption. As long as Chris had known him, however, Eddie had always been the one who was honest and wise. It had been Chris who’d denied the truth.

“I know, Eddie,” he replied, turning to keep walking. “I thought that’s where we were going. Show me where you’re staying?”

Later in the night, they’d talk about what their lives were like in the last decade. They would go over careers and pivotal moments. Hospital trips and boot camp and academia and war stories and bad blow jobs. They’d share all the times they thought of each other in that time, and all the ways they held onto each other.

But the moment they stepped in the room, there was no speaking. Chris slid his hands underneath the letterman with his surname on it so he could touch Eddie’s bare skin when they slid their tongues together. Eddie made a pitiful sound into his mouth that made him laugh.

Chris had him panting on the bed, his pants undone and his erection tenting through his underwear, when Eddie pulled back.

“Do you still love me?” he ventured, face flushed with two shades of red.

The hand smoothing Eddie’s cock through his briefs didn’t slow. He brought his other hand up to Eddie’s face, curling around it. “Yes,” he answered, shifting forward on his knees to fit closer between Eddie’s open legs. “All this time, up until now. I never forgot how it felt. It kept me alive on nights I was sure I would die.”

Eddie’s body seemed to relax. He huffed out a breath as Chris’ hand slipped under the leg of his underwear and started stroking him.

“I thought it was just girls,” Eddie said, mostly to himself. “I thought it was just them I didn’t feel anything with. But even with guys, it wasn’t the same. I never felt the exact same. It just made me miss you.”

Chris got off his knees and leant over the edge of the bed, kissing Eddie deeply. He wrapped his arms around the man.

“You always knew much better than I did. About everything. You always knew how to put words to how you were feeling. What _I_ was feeling,” Chris said against his lips. “Every time.”

Eddie got to his feet and stripped off the rest of his clothes, turning Chris around on the bed and working him open. He was careful with his fingers, stretching one at a time, until the blonde impatiently asked for another.

“You _are_ different, pretty boy,” Eddie purred thoughtfully, doing what was asked of him.

He fucked Chris, starving for it, and after he’d recovered, Chris put his legs around his shoulders and fucked him back.

It wasn’t different from anything they’d been before, just louder, and more intensely pleasurable.

And this time, when their bodies galloped against each other, it wasn’t the product of two forces grating terribly. It wasn’t suicidally beautiful. It was just beautiful. The age of their brutality had ended.


End file.
